Movie Theater Stocks Rise After Record-Setting Thanksgiving Feast

With a big question looming over HBO distribution in the UK, Germany and Italy as Warner Bros. Discovery rolls out Max globally, WBD's JB Perrette floated a potential new partner in the territories: Amazon.

HBO's longtime distributor, Sky, could well stay in business with WBD, Perrette said during an appearance at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit, echoing comments last spring by international chief Gerhard Zeiler. And yet, the CEO of streaming and games ventured, "there's also great alternatives. Amazon is great in those markets and certainly eager to be more and more aggressive in that space."

Sky's deals to carry HBO content on its Sky Atlantic channel are set to expire in the key markets in about a year's time. WBD has said it intends to launch Max there by 2026. Like all programmer-distributor relationships, ties between WBD and Sky have come under increasing scrutiny during the streaming era given how different its customer acquisition and retention dynamics are from those in linear TV.

The UK-Germany-Italy dilemma has been in play since the 2020 launch of HBO Max, when the service was run by AT&T-owned WarnerMedia. Since HBO's origins in the 1970s, the network grew as an exponent of the pay-TV bundle, wholesaled by its owners and marketed to consumers by distributors like Sky in Europe. Technology now allows streaming services to bypass those traditional routes to the customer, but in recent years companies like WBD have grappled with the steep cost of acquiring and maintaining subscribers on their own.

In launching Max in dozens of global territories, Perrette said, the company has "a lot of proof points" of how the company has "been able to manage both a [direct-to-consumer] presence and a [distribution] partner presence. ... The same could be true with Sky." The satellite operator has a "large installed base" of subscribers, Perrette added, "and our content is critical to them."

Ultimately, Perrette said, "time will tell" as to which strategic path the parties take, as discussions continue. "In the old model," Perrette noted, "you would have to pull all your content off Sky and only go direct-to-consumer. .... That's not necessarily the case, particularly when they have a big, established installed base with a lot of our fans. There are very collaborative ways we could work together, as we've proven we can do."